CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE VICINITY OF THE OPERA ARRONDISSEMENT IX. (OPÉRA) The Paris Opera-house was built between the years 1861-75 to replace the structure in Rue le Peletier burnt to the ground in 1873. On its ornate Renaissance façade we see, amid other statuary, the noted group “La Danse,” the work of Carpeaux. Of the “Grands Boulevards,” by which the Opera is surrounded, we shall speak later (_see_ p. 297). Most of the streets in its neighbourhood are modern, stretching across the site of demolished buildings, important in their day, but of which few traces now remain. Rue des Mathurins lies across the grounds of the vanished convent, Ville l’Évêque. Rue Tronchet runs where was once the Ferme des Mathurins (_see_ p. 224). Rue Caumartin, opened 1779, records the name of the Prévôt des Marchands of the day. It was a short street then, lengthened later by the old adjoining streets Ste-Croix and Thiroux, the site erewhile of the famed _porcelaine_ factory of la Reine. (Marie-Antoinette). No. 1 dates from 1779 and was noted for its gardens arranged in Oriental style. No. 2, to-day the Paris Sporting Club, dates from the same period. No. 2 _bis_ and most of the other houses have been restored or rebuilt. The butcher Legendre, who set the phrygian cap on the head of Louis XVI, is said to have lived at No. 52. No. 65 was built as a Capucine convent (1781-83). Sequestered at the Revolution, it became a hospital, then a _lycée_, its name changed and rechanged: Lycée Buonaparte, Collège Bourbon, Lycée Fontanes, finally Lycée Condorcet, while the convent chapel, rebuilt, became the church St-Louis d’Antin. Rue Vignon was, till 1881, Rue de la Ferme des Mathurins, as an inscription on the walls of No. 1 reminds us. Rue de Provence, named after the brother of Louis XVI, was opened in 1771, built over a drain which went from Place de la République to the Seine near Pont de l’Alma. No. 22 is an ancient house restored. Berlioz lived at No. 41. Meissonier at No. 43. Nos. 45 to 65 are on the site of the mansion and grounds of the duc d’Orléans which extended to Rue Taitbout. We see a fine old _hôtel_ at No. 59. Cité d’Antin, opening at No. 61, was built in 1825, on the site of the ancient hôtel Montesson. Liszt, the pianist, lived at No. 63. The Café du Trèfle claims existence since the year 1555. The busy, bustling Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin was an important roadway in the twelfth century, as Chemin des Porcherons. The houses we see there are mostly of eighteenth-century date, others occupy the site of ancient demolished buildings. Many notable persons lived here. No. 1, where we see the Vaudeville theatre (there since 1867), was of old the site of two historic mansions. No. 2, now a fashionable restaurant, dates from 1792, built as Dépôt des Gardes Françaises. Rossini lived there for one year--1857-58. Where Rue Meyerbeer was opened in 1860 stood, in other days, the _hôtel_ of Mme d’Épinay, whose walls had sheltered Grimm, and for a time Mozart. A neighbouring house was the home of Necker, where his daughter, Mme de Staël, grew up and which became later the possession of Mme Récamier. The graveyard of St-Roch stretched, till the end of the eighteenth century, across the site of Nos. 20-22. No. 42 belonged to Mme Talma. There Mirabeau died in 1791; his widow in 1800. Joséphine de Beauharnais, not yet Empress, dwelt at No. 62. Gambetta at No. 55. No. 68, hôtel Montfermeil, was rebuilt by Fesch, Napoléon’s uncle. Rue St-Lazare was, before 1770, Rue des Porcherons, from the name of an important estate of the district over which the abbesses of Montmartre had certain rights of jurisdiction. Passage de Tivoli, at No. 96, recalls the first Tivoli with its _jardins anglais_ stretching far at this corner. Its owner’s head fell, severed by the guillotine, and his _folie_ became national property. Fêtes were given there by the Revolutionist authorities till its restoration, in 1810, to heirs of the man who had built it. Avenue du Coq records the existence in fourteenth-century days of a Château du Coq, known also as Château des Porcherons, the manor-house of the Porcherons’ estate. The Square de la Trinité is on the site of a famous restaurant of past days, the well-known “Magny,” which as a dancing-saloon--“La Grande Pinte”--was on the site till 1851. The church is modern (1867). No. 56 is part of the hôtel Bougainville where the great tragedienne, Mlle Mars, lived. At No. 23, dating from the First Empire, we find a fine old staircase and in the court a pump marked with the imperial eagle. Rue de Chateaudun is modern. The _brasserie_ at the corner of Rue Maubeuge stands on the site of the ancient cemetery des Porcherons. Rue de la Victoire, in the seventeenth century Ruellette-au-Marais-des-Porcherons, was renamed in 1792 Rue Chantereine, referring to the very numerous frogs (RANA = frog) which filled the air of that then marshy district with their croaking. Buonaparte lived there at one time, hence the name given in 1798, taken away in 1816, restored by Thiers in 1833. By a curious coincidence, an Order of Nuns, “de la Victoire,” so called to memorize a very much earlier victory--Bouvines 1214--owned property here. On the site of No. 60, now a modern house let out in flats, stood in olden days the chief entrance to l’hôtel de la Victoire, a remarkably handsome structure built in 1770, sold and razed in 1857--alas! At the end of the court at No. 58 we see the ancient hôtel d’Argenson, its _salon_ kept undisturbed from the days when great politicians of the past met and made decisive resolutions there. The Bains Chantereine at No. 46 has been théâtre Olymphique, théâtre des Victoires Nationales, théâtre des Troubadours, and was for a few days in 1804 l’Opéra Comique; No. 45, with its busts and bas-reliefs, dates from 1840. Rue Taitbout, begun in 1773, lengthened by the union of adjoining streets, records the name of an eighteenth-century municipal functionary. Isabey, Ambroise Thomas and Manuel Gracia lived in this old street, and at No. 1, now a smart _café_, two noted Englishmen, the Marquis of Hertford and Lord Seymour, lived at different periods. No. 2 was once the famous restaurant Tortoni. No. 30, as a private _hôtel_, sheltered Talleyrand and Mme Grand. We see interesting vestiges at No. 44. The Square d’Orléans is the ancient Cité des Trois Frères, in past days a nest of artists and men of letters: Dumas, George Sand, Lablache, etc.